China Bars U.S. Official From American’s Appeal.

A Beijing appeals court barred U.S. diplomats from attending a hearing Tuesday for an American geologist sentenced to eight years in prison for obtaining information on China’s oil industry that the government says are state secrets. Please read the article in The Washington Post here:

The two-hour-plus hearing in the case of Xue Feng ended without a judgment. He and his lawyer argued the government wrongly applied its broad powers to classify as secrets information that should be commonly available, said the lawyer, Tong Wei.

Outside the Beijing High People’s Court, a senior U.S. Embassy official called for Xue’s release and return to the U.S. and fumed about the court’s decision to exclude American diplomats.

“This case has not been handled with the kind of transparency that would befit a nation which tells us the rule of law is paramount in all judicial proceedings,” Robert Goldberg, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, told foreign reporters.